Delhi Congress’s ‘when’ as AAP misses real-time pollution monitoring deadline

The Delhi Congress on Wednesday said a facility here for real-time monitoring of pollutants and air quality, which was to become functional on October 20, “is yet to commence operations”, a claim the city government termed as baseless.

The party’s city president, Anil Kumar, who visited the Centre, also alleged that despite the air quality index (AQI) reaching “severe” in many parts of the national capital, “machines were still being procured at supersites”. Is”.

The Delhi government, in partnership with IIT-Kanpur, has come up with a supersite, which is capable of monitoring the air quality in real time and various compounds in Rouse Avenue to make forecasts.

“The supersite which was supposed to be made functional on October 20 to monitor the pollution has not started operations yet. It is still in the development stage and the machines are still being procured. It is ‘AQI in many parts’. Gambhir’ city,” Mr. Kumar said.

Delhi’s air quality improved marginally on Wednesday morning as the weather conditions were relatively better at 376. The 24-hour average index stood at 424 at 4 pm on Tuesday, the worst since December 26 last year, when it stood at 459, according to Central Pollution. Control Committee.

An AQI above 400 is considered “severe” and can affect healthy people and severely affect people with existing diseases.

Responding to the allegations, project in-charge Mukesh Sharma said that the equipment has been procured and installed. He said the real-time data would be shared with the public after November 10.

The Delhi government’s environment department said in a statement that the allegations made by the Congress are “baseless” and that the equipment has been tested at the supersite.

Sharma said, “All the equipment has been procured for the real-time source segmentation study. Internal verification of all the data takes around two weeks. The process started about three to four days back and will take another week to complete. ” ,

“The data, including pollution compounds and real-time AQI, and forecast data will be available to the public after November 10,” he said.

Officials of the Environment Department said that a meeting was also held at the Delhi Secretariat under the chairmanship of the Principal Secretary of the Department on November 1, in which the Project In-charge gave a live demonstration on tracking the real-time data through various equipment procured at the supersite. did.

A department official said, “Some equipment has been imported for the facility. Technical teams from all companies have installed and tested all these equipment. Data from all the equipment is properly reaching the computer system.”

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)